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Should telecom rules be upgraded for wireless?

Some wireless carriers argue that public officials must scrap the act, the author writes. | AP Photo

Others would be happy to see any kind of movement.

“I’m in favor of change — period,” said Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s top lobbyist. “I think the status quo is untenable. I would welcome any congressional activity aimed at reform, whether it is incremental or comprehensive.”

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The commission is in the midst of reallocating airwaves to the mobile industry by encouraging broadcasters to give up some spectrum and share the proceeds raised from auctioning with the federal government. In addition, the commission is revamping a federal subsidy program to support the spread of broadband and is working to implement rules to ensure that wireless carriers charge each other for a reasonable rate for carrying data traffic.

Rick Kaplan, head of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau at the FCC, doesn’t seem fazed by the jurisdictional issues facing the agency.

“It’s not really something we spend a lot of time worrying about,” Kaplan said during a recent interview. “There is nothing we have been involved with … where issues came up that aren’t things that we could deal with through industry-based solutions or through our own authority,” Kaplan said.

Throughout this process, both philosophical and practical questions have to be answered about what consumers should expect from the government and how to account for an industry with an infrastructure that has changed so radically.

“The potential for abuse and the power provided to telco carriers in this IP-based world is unchanged from the power that Ma Bell had in the telephony era,” said Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School who served as a tech adviser to President Barack Obama’s transition team. “The question is whether the act can be adapted to” protect consumers, ensure access to communication networks and create a level playing field for competitors, Crawford said.

The framework of the 1996 act is “useful” in determining “how to regulate services moving forward,” said Michael Romano, senior vice president of policy at the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, which represents rural carriers. “There is some fine-tuning to be done,” but the reality is that “IP is just another network technology.”

NTCA is one of several groups challenging the commission’s reforms on a government subsidy program, formally known as the Universal Service Fund, which offers aid to providers in rural and low-income areas to ensure ubiquitous telephone access. The FCC is in the process of overhauling the program so that it supports broadband as opposed to traditional landline telephone services.

For the Internet, Tauke would like a new statute that embraces the inclusive management approach that has allowed the Web to flourish. Government, Tauke argues, should act as a backstop “to deal with industry disputes that can’t be resolved in a multi-stakeholder model.”

Left up to Feld, Congress would act first to establish a “duty to interconnect.”